Why Can’t I Finish a Book?
20 quotes about books to get you through reader’s block
Maybe it’s because summer is finally around the corner or maybe it’s because I have too many books to get to and it’s stressing me out, but lately, I’ve been having a hard time finishing a book. I’ll pick up a book, read a chunk of it, and never pick it up again. Then I’ll pick up another book and do the same.
I’m currently in the middle of reading:
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Yes, still.)
Deep Work by Cal Newport
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
The Sabbath by AJ Heschel
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
And that’s probably not even a complete list.
I want to clarify: These are not bad books. I don’t finish bad books (and neither should you, but that’s for another time). These are good books that, for some reason, I just can’t seem to muster the motivation to see through to the end.
So I’ve been feeling the need for some reading inspiration to help me stop DNF-ing (Did Not Finish—it’s a thing) and read more books from my pile (they tend to stare at me until I read them and it’s getting quite awkward).
General inspiring quotes are great, but even better? Quotes about books. Well, quotes about books and reading. The following 20 quotes from various famous persons have already left me feeling more excited about reading, and might even help me finish The Brothers Karamazov this week (no promises).
Some of these quotes come from fictional characters rather than the author themselves, but I'm attributing them to the author since the best way to say what you really mean is through the mouth of a fictional character anyway.
Please enjoy this delightful array of words about books:
Harper Lee: “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
C.S. Lewis: “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
Ray Bradbury: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
Fran Lebowitz: “Think before you speak. Read before you think.”
Descartes: “The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries.”
Stephen King: “Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
Fernando Pessoa: “Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
Maureen Corrigan: “It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.”
Mark Twain: “The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can’t.”
Oscar Wilde: “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
Italo Calvino: “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
Jorge Luis Borges: “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.”
Edgar Allan Poe: “I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.”
David Quammen: “Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.”
Jane Austen: “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
Oscar Wilde: “It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
Madeleine L’Engle: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
Gustave Flaubert: “Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
Carlos Ruis Zafón: “Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
I hope you found these helpful, inspiring, or, at the very least, entertaining. Do you have a favorite one? Or do you have your own favorite quote about books? Please share it with the rest of us!
Have a great week, and keep reading,
Arty
What did you read over Shabbos?
A selection of shared Shabbos reads
I also used to have the problem of too many books in progress and either finishing them very slowly or not at all. Eventually, I decided I was being unfair to the books by not dedicating myself to them, so I went to a different method. Now I read only two books at the same time, and I aim to read enough every day to get through most books (usually under 325 pages) in two weeks or less. For me, it’s been a formula for enjoying what I read more as well as for reading more books than ever. My new problem, however, is that my “to read” pile is ever growing!
I am glad you brought this up. There have been books I completed in one sitting - such as the Kite Runner (I read it on the return flight from Israel), or the Relic Master by Christopher Buckley and a number of YA books. And some books take me awhile to the point that I am struggling. What I've done is put those books aside with the intention of returning to them and start a new book or sometimes I go to my go-to books and re-read sections that I enjoyed, sort of like mind-candy.